Sunday, 28 October 2012

Explaining American beer

I used to like Beck's. Unless they're importing the real stuff into Australia from Germany, I won't be drinking it anymore. This stuff is important.

Brian Rinfret likes imported beer from Germany. He sometimes buys Spaten. He enjoys an occasional Bitburger. When he was 25 years old, he discovered Beck’s, a pilsner brewed in the city of Bremen in accordance with the Reinheitsgebot, the German Purity Law of 1516. It said so right on the label. After that, Rinfret was hooked.One Friday night in January, Rinfret, who is now 52, stopped on the way home from work at his local liquor store in Monroe, N.J., and purchased a 12-pack of Beck’s. When he got home, he opened a bottle. “I was like, what the hell?” he recalls. “It tasted light. It tasted weak. Just, you know, night and day. Bubbly, real fizzy. To me, it wasn’t German beer. It tasted like a Budweiser with flavoring.”He examined the label. It said the beer was no longer brewed in Bremen. He looked more closely at the fine print: “Product of the USA.” This was profoundly unsettling for a guy who had been a Beck’s drinker for more than half his life. He was also miffed to have paid the full import price for the 12-pack.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

They've been brewing fake Becks here under license (and selling it at import prices) for quite a while. If you buy your beer at Coles or Woollies, chances are you've already been stung. I believe some of the specialist shops like Plonk in Canberra still import the real deal, but you've got to go look for it. And this is true of quite a few 'imports'. Check out the fine print on the bottles. I'd be willing to bet that most people drinking high-dollar fashion beers here in Oz are being dudded.